Tuesday, 28 October 2014

Purchasing a cheap blend called Jim McEwan’s Symphony No 1
(which you can read a bit more about here and here) on a trip to Islay,
started me thinking about people who collect whisky. For me, having a whisky
collection is essential, but only from the perspective of wanting a selection
of whiskies to choose from whenever I want a drink (and perhaps to some extent
for the purpose of learning about whisky), but some people collect whisky for
other reasons.

Buying a new bottle of whisky is one of my favourite things
at the moment, which sounds a bit sad, so it would be a shame if I only allowed
myself to buy one at a time rather than maintaining my collection or allowing
it to grow (slightly). Given the amount that I’m learning about whisky, could I
put that learning and enjoyment to a more useful purpose, I wonder? That’s one
of the things I’ll be asking in this feature.

My main motivation in buying whisky is that I like to drink
whisky, and I want to know what they taste like – let’s say with a view to
experiencing the pinnacle of what distilled spirit can offer (for some reason –
why distilled spirit and not tea or something cheaper and non-alcoholic is a
question for another day). I don’t know yet if one day I’ll feel like I’ve
achieved that – presumably it is possible that I’ve already enjoyed a glass of
whisky more than I ever will again (it certainly feels that way from time to
time - and what is the greatest it, or any sensory experience can be anyway?),
but for now my journey continues.

Until very recently then, I literally couldn’t imagine me
purchasing a bottle of whisky for any other purpose than to drink it. If I buy
a bottle with the intention of not drinking it, then I’ll always need to
purchase another bottle for drinking, and I don’t have that much disposable
income.

To be fair, my collection method probably doesn’t even
really count as a collection any more than having four different types of pasta
in your cupboard counts as having a pasta collection. If it does, I’ve got one
of those too. No, I buy whiskies (special and not so special), I cherish them,
I open them, I drink them, I don’t cherish them as much as I did before I
opened them, I buy more (but different – I ver y rarely buy the same bottle
twice).

People like to collect things, so for some, having an
impressive collection is an end in itself, but when it comes to whisky, that’s
something I actually have trouble
understanding – what are you keeping it for? It is at odds with the essence of what whisky is; that, as a distilled
spirit – it is for drinking, unlike you know, people who collect pigs or
whatever – those items are made for collecting; they have no other purpose (not
real pigs, items in the shape of pigs). Even a collector of cars presumably drives his cars occasionally.

What I can understand though, is the value of actively
collecting whisky as an investment. Rare bottles can sell for thousands of
pounds, so with a little long term planning, smart buying and a lot of luck, in
20+ years even I could be making profits in the thousands… maybe… assuming
whisky will be valuable in 20 years time. It probably will.

Presumably some whisky collectors don’t ever even drink whisky, though I expect there is some crossover for
most people. They enjoy whisky, become intrigued by all those rare, expensive
bottles, then maybe they realise that they could have one in the future if they
start a collection now.

What intrigues me
about those expensive bottles though is what
does it taste like? I’ll never actually find out – unless I buy something
now, keep it, and get lucky enough for it to be rare and expensive in 20 years.
However, it will only taste the same in 20 years as it does now, so in reality,
I could already know what it tastes like, I just don’t know what those bottles
that are already vintage and expensive nowtaste like – and some collectors will never know despite owning a bottle.
So isn’t it still better to buy it and then drink it? Yes, but then of course,
I haven’t made any money. But nor will I have had to keep something for 20 odd
years.

It just brings me back to how good can it be? In some last minute research before posting
this entry I looked up the most expensive bottles that are available on The Whisky Exchangeand found an Ardbeg at
£3500 (not the most expensive by a long way, to be fair, but I chose to focus
on Ardbeg that day) that Jim Murray had supposedly raved about… giving it 96 out
of 100. But the ordinary 10 year old Ardbeg that you can buy for around £40
scores 97 out of 100… so there’s really no point, is there?

The ultimate, innocent ideal in terms of collecting is
probably someone collecting whisky for fun, as a child does, and then one day
realising their collection is worth a staggering amount of money. Overall
though, there can only be three purposes behind collecting whisky; drink it,
sell it, bequeath it to a loved one. You can’t take it with you, so collecting
for the sake of it doesn’t make sense. One day you’ve got to decide am I going to drink it, am I going to sell
it? And if neither… well your heirs might appreciate it, or they might just
have a party and throw it away, all the while shouting, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” and going, “Woooooooo!”

And that would be a massive crime. On your part.

Or if you haven’t got heirs, you could have a massive house
made of scratching posts constructed for your cats and feed them fresh trout
for the rest of their natural lives. Or get someone else to.

Buying whisky for investment isn’t all that attractive to me
anyway. It begs the question, if a bottle of whisky can be sold for thousands
of pounts… what is the motivation of the person who buys it? Presumably
doing so is no longer an investment, so must surely be a vanity project – to
own the most expensive whiskies.

It’s been a while since we had an imaginary conversation on
the blog, so imagine you met someone who told you they had an impressive
vintage whisky collection, and took you to see it:

wow, this is amazing!
I’d love to try… this one… and this one… and in fact, all of these…

Well you can’t.

Have you tried any of
them?

No.

Do you think you ever
will? Cos if you do, can I come?

I probably won’t open them.

[collective sadface]

An acquaintance of mine tends to buy two of everything – one
for drinking, one for collecting. That’s all very well, but not all whisky is
cheap, and it seems likely that a good proportion of the whisky that one day is
going to be valuable is already fairly expensive, so in the short term, that
£70 you’re indulging yourself with… just became £140 [yes dear, we can still go on holiday… it’ll just be Clacton-on-Sea this
year.]

Of most potential value is going to be anything that isn’t
widely available, and particularly bottles from closed distilleries and limited
editions – where the bottles might be numbered, or from a single cask, and
generally particularly old. That stuff don’t (necessarily) come cheap, though
it is useful as a guide for whether you should buy two bottles of something.

My thinking at the moment is that I would rather have had a
rare bottle and drank it, than to have one and never find out how it tastes. So
maybe one day I’ll be perusing expensive bottles and find one I’ve already
drunk. And then I think I’ll feel smug rather than upset that I didn’t save it.
Perhaps some collectors reach a point where it doesn’t matter how the whisky
tastes – it is in fact purely a commodity and no longer an example of one of
life’s finer pleasures.

Nevertheless, THIS interesting and informative website has
some interesting points to make on the matter of tasting and collecting – two
of which are very good pieces of advice.

Firstly, if you are serious about starting a collection, you
should agree an investment budget with your partner per year. That sounds
doable, and I have even mooted this possibility with Mrs Cake. I reckon that
for £200 a year I could select between 2
and 4 bottles that might give me some chance of turning a profit a number of
years down the line.

But what if you don’t live long enough to either sell it or
enjoy it? That brings me to the other suggestion which actually deals with the
dilemma of collecting versus drinking. The solution? Not buy two bottles, buy three. Then you drink one, save one to
sell in the medium term in order to accrue more funds for investment, and keep
the third indefinitely to accrue maximum value – except then you have to triple your outlay… which is frankly
ludicrous.

Collecting whisky for investment is obviously a long term
endeavour. You aren’t going to make much money for a good while and you’re
going to need somewhere to safely keep that growing collection, but if you can
keep it up and forget about it, one day you might find yourself sitting on an
impressive sum and maybe even afford that yacht you’ve always dreamed of (but
still probably not).

For now, I’m content to simply buy and drink. The future’s a
long way away and, thinking about it, the potential benefits probably aren’t
that significant anyway, once you’re ensconced in the reality of life and
money. It’s like recently when Mrs Cake and I were thinking about getting life
insurance, and based on how much we were willing to pay each month, they
determined we could have a £150,000 policy, so if I or Mrs Cake died, the other
would get that sum. Frankly that just doesn’t seem enough to be worth bothering
with. It would help if we had kids, but since we don’t (Operation Impregnatron
pending), I can’t see an Aston Martin or a paid mortgage or a lonely holiday in
Asia and a few years off work mending a broken heart (aw).

So with whisky, clearly I’d have to be making a profit of lottery
jackpot proportions in 20-30 years if I was going to consider it worthwhile
and, given that so many bottles have a price in the thousands for age, vintage
and rarity when released by the
distillery is it actually going to be those that I can’t afford in the first
place that are more likely to increase in value to astronomical levels rather
than my modest £50-£100 efforts? Probably. I’d want the return on my investment
to be life-changing, not representative of a fairly large drop in a cosmic
sized ocean. I’ve never really been motivated by money anyway.

So I think I’ve talked myself out of it for the moment.
Don’t let me convince you it isn’t worth your while though. Perhaps you can
justify the kind of investment required more than I can. You have to speculate
to accumulate after all, they say. It’s just that my speculation leads me to
thinking I’m not really that bothered. You’re not me though, are you? No. Make
your own mind up. And just think, if I keep drinking all those bottles that
might be valuable one day, that only serves to make yours more valuable (because there will be less of them). You’re welcome.

That’s it for me for another week. Thanks for staying till
the end if you did. I’ll be back uh… perhaps not next week as I think I’m going
to Amsterdam and Berlin to seek out some beer, jenever, absinthe and possibly
brandy but, after that, as ever I’ll be back with something equally as
interesting as this week’s post no doubt. In the meantime, enjoy yer week,
enjoy yer booze and if you’ve already got a whisky collection, leave me a
message eh? I’d be interested to hear what your motivation is, how it’s going,
how you got started and, more importantly, what’s in it?

Sunday, 19 October 2014

As ever, this post was written a few months
ago, but it seems strange that fate should determine I consider posting it so
soon after Alfonso Ribeiro should reprise the awesome Carlton dance on
America’s Dancing With the Stars to the delight of the entire internet.So while
I wasn’t sure I was even going to bother posting this at all, in honour of that
excellent dance, this week I’ll throw off my pretence of being a civilised
drinker and encourage you to chug it down as we play… The Fresh Prince Drinking
Game.

I was waiting for
Mrs Cake to finish making her brew so that we could watch some Breaking Bad,
and decided to just flick the telly on for a couple of minutes. What I saw was
an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, in which Will and Carlton compete in
a gameshow against DJ Jazzy Jeff and another guy. It was pretty funny, and that
reminded me of a Fresh Prince drinking game that I invented with my friend Pits
when we were flatmates.

The Fresh Prince
used to be on TV early on Friday evenings – right about the time we’d be
warming up for a night out. So one evening we decided we needed a party starter
of some kind – something that would encourage us to drink more quickly and get
our buzz on.

Despite enjoying The
Fresh Prince throughout our youth, we had both come to the conclusion that the
show was a bit lame by now, but these were the early days of Freeview, and
there wasn’t anything else on, so we found ourselves watching it anyway. If you
aren’t British and/or don’t remember the era I’m referring to, just think about
now and The Big Bang Theory… it would be the same if I could bring myself to
watch that for more than two minutes without developing into a seething mass of
rage and murderous intent.

We still got a few
laughs out of the Fresh Prince from time to time, and that led us to the theme
of this game – you had to drink three fingers of your beer or a shot (dependant
upon what you were drinking) every time you laughed at a joke.

It turns out you can
get pretty smashed in half an hour in this way. The alcohol you imbibe as a
result of that first laugh inevitably leads to more laughs and more drinks as
you start to find things amusing that would normally make you tut or go, “meh”.
For me the laughs were coming so fast that I’d incur another three finger
penalty (sounds er… interesting) before I’d even refilled my glass or drank my lastpenalty.

I suppose that’s
where The Big Bang Theory game would fall down; there wouldn’t be a first laugh
to get you started. Instead though, you could have to drink every time the
“studio audience” laughed, but that would be less subjective and fun.

Anyway, by 6.30 we would
be tanked and ready to hit the streets of Didsbury.

Most tv themed
drinking games rely on everyone drinking at the same time, or in concert with
something that happens in relation to a designated character as it’s a case of
‘drink every time this happens, drink every time that happens’. Ours was purely
dependant on whether you could control your rapidly widening sense of mirth. We
didn’t have time to think up drink triggers, but if you wanted to, you could go
with something like ‘everytime Carlton does that funny dance’, ‘every time
Carlton mentions Tom Jones’, ‘every time Will makes a fat joke at Uncle Phil’s
expense’, ‘every time Hilary says something stupid’, ‘every time Geoffrey says
something sarcastic’…

Now it’s your turn.
Do you have any tv shows that you like to drink to? What are they, and what are
the drink triggers? Answer in the comments. I’m thinking How I Met Your Mother (every
time there is a play) and Arrested Development (every time there is immediate
irony) would make good drinking game source material, though I’ve heard there
is also a drinking game based around Grand
Designs that sounds particularly brilliant.

And I'll leave you there for this week. Next week... I might be discussing the practice of collecting whisky. See you then.

Sunday, 12 October 2014

We’ve been going
through quite a bit of gin recently. Mrs Cake has grown fond of the odd gin and
tonic and that combination has become her standard drink for taking to parties,
so I’ve quickly gone from never having
bought a bottle to… having now bought a few bottles. I don’t think I’ve
made any secret of my apathy for this particular spirit thus far, but a spirit
it is, and therefore not undeserving of some attention on these pages.

Now, the last bottle
I bought was the Plymouth brand and admittedly, it was the result of some
woefully shoddy mental arithmetic on my part (particularly for someone who
works in accounts – shhh…) concerning
a certain cross-spirits offer that
was on at Tesco that day. I didn’t mind though because I didn’t have to buy
Gordon’s, and for my money (£20.30, I believe it was) I got a litre of gin at
an encouraging 41.2% ABV. We tried it almost straight away, and agreed that it
was… all right.

Moving on, and a
short while later it was time to gin up once more. This time Mrs Cake and I
agreed between us that she should buy it, since as I say, she drinks most of
it. We happened to be in Aldi, and though we’ve had it before, we decided to
try the multi award winning Oliver
Cromwell – Aldi’s finest. It’s only £9.49 for the obligatory 70cl.

First test was head
to head gin and tonics. Like the drinks themselves, the results were mixed. Mrs
Cake preferred the one made with Aldi’s finest while I preferred the one made
with Plymouth – expensive tastes. As expected though, there wasn’t much to
choose, and consequently I still haven’t found any definitive reason for
spending all that much money on gin.

I moved on – this
time ably assisted by Mrs Cake, as opposed to being joined by her – to doing a neat gin test. This time I figured we
may as well go blind, so I asked Mrs Cake to do the pouring for me. Without
keeping you in too much suspense; I was able to correctly identify that sample
A was the Plymouth. It was sweeter both on the nose and on the palate, though
only marginally. The most noticeable difference was the strength. Plymouth
holds a 3.7% advantage over the Cromwell, and it shows – not that the Cromwell
is unpleasant, it just tastes watery by comparison.

As ever, it leaves
you with the question of value; is the extra strength and a very slightly preferable taste worth
that extra £10? It depends what you intend to use it for. If you’re going to
drink it neat, you need the extra strength and flavour in my opinion. If it is
for mixing though, which so much of the market of gin seems to be, I can’t see
the justification. You pays your money, you takes your choice. So you decide.

Sunday, 5 October 2014

Good evening! We’re
looking at brandy this week, and comparing two brands of admittedly different
varieties from mainland Europe. From Spain, and in the brandy de Jerez solera gran riserva style, aged around
10 years, it’s Gran Duque D’Alba –
henceforth to be known as The Duke.

Its opposite number
is from France, and represents the Armagnac style. It’s Bas Armagnac delord –
or The Lord, as it will be known from now on, and it is of the Hors d’Age variety which means it should
also be around 10 years old.

The Duke was
procured from a duty free shop in San Javier airport in Spain, while The Lord
was a very generous and thoughtful gift from my friend Geoffray Westside, when
he visited from France in July.

I had asked that
Geoffray bring me some Armagnac, and provided a list of potential targets, but
I had to cancel when I spent more than I had planned on the Golfageddon holiday. Geoffray ignored my
instruction and brought it as a gift. Good man.

So what are we looking
at here:

Price

The Duke: 21 euros,
but you can expect to pay around £45 in the UK.

The Lord: I don’t
know how much Geoffray paid, and I haven’t been able to find the exact same
bottling online, but it’s looking to be somewhere from £45-60 here. Check this page though, where certain vintages push the price up to beyond £1000. Clearly
it is quite renowned.

Presentation

The Duke: quite
fancy; it comes in a box that is trying to look old, while the bottle itself is
in an interesting cylindrical Benedictine
style, according to this website. The top is quite large and it is topped off with a large cork, making
a refreshing change from the booze resistorcap you get in so many Spanish liquor bottles. Then there is a
faux wax seal and (for some reason) a bit of ribbon, giving a three musketeers
feel to the whole thing. Overall it gives the effect of potentially being quite
special.

The Lord: here we have the brandy coming in its own little
wooden coffin – very special – while
the bottle is a kind of flask shape
and is frosted. There’s a bit of faux wax on there also. It all adds up to a
great package. Of course, you wonder how much you’re paying for the packaging,
but who doesn’t like that little bit extra?

Strength

Both are bottled at 40% ABV.

In the glass

I can’t tell any difference; deep and dark.

Nose

They actually smell the same, but The Lord is better, giving
more of an impression of wooden barrels and a gentle smokiness on top of the
fruity tones that they share.

Palate

Again, they taste the same, but The Lord is better. It’s
just that little bit more complex and varied even though I can’t put my finger
on a single element that makes this so. I suppose it’s the recognisable
Armagnac tang that just edges it over the Jerez bite.

Finish

Equal length. Nothing specific to note.

Verdict

While I can’t compare the value of these two products, since
I don’t know the cost of one of them, with the one that I do know - The Duke –
it does have to be a consideration. At £45 I certainly wouldn’t be buying it
here in the UK when you think of all the classy single malt scotch you can get
for that price. However, it does make a decent souvenir to bring back from your
Spanish holiday.

Pricing considerations aside, it is plain to see that I have
a slight preference for The Lord – great package, fine brandy. Nowhere near
approaching delivery of the kind of pleasure that my favourite whiskies bring,
but that’s entirely subjective.

And that’s all I have to say about that. Next week I’ll be
dipping my toe into the waters of one of my least favourite spirit genres: gin,
and asking what’s so fucking special
about gin?!? So until then… I’ll see ya.

Definitions

What happens when you zone out after having had a cheeky lunchtime pint.

Alcothusiast:

Not an alcoholic, someone who appreciates booze.

Anxiety, The:

The uneasy feeling that accompanies any noteworthy hangover.

Booze Buffet Mentality:

The propensity people have to go nuts whenever there's a free bar.

Booze Porn:Photos of alcohol.

Bread Chest:Not booze related, but this term describes the indigestion you get from eating too many bread products too quickly. Just putting it out there...

Crawler's Block:The inability to decide where to go next during a pub crawl - often resulting in crawl stagnation and someone saying, "shall we just have another one here?"

Crawl Stagnation:The result of failing to plan a pub crawl sufficiently - lack of a route, theme or over-familiarity with nearby pubs can all be contributing factors.

Excess Induced Alcohol Aversion:An intolerance for a drink caused (usually) by one occasion of overindulgence.

The Family:My whisky collection.

MOMA:

Moment of Maximum Appreciation. Every bottle has one. It's the time you drink it where you enjoy it most.

Old Man Pub:Traditional British pub, renowned for being quiet, cosy and frequented by old men. Much favoured by people who like a nice chat while they drink.Psychological Drinks Cabinet:Collective term relating to the kinds of alcoholic drinks a person has need for.Road Beers:

Cans of beer that you take with you when you go out, to consume on the way.

The 3 Types of Rum:White, gold and dark. Together they form the base of many a great cocktail.

About Me

Neil Cake is interested in all types of booze, but is by no means an authority or expert. Most of the time he's just trying to be funny, but he is learning, and enjoys sharing his adventures and what he learns on the Drink it How You Like it blog.
Thengyuverrymuuuuuch.